By Rob Copeland and Katherine Bindley
Out of habit, Nancy Carter, a retired federal employee, turned
to Google for help one August evening. She ended the night wishing
she hadn't.
Ms. Carter had pulled into her Falls Church, Va., driveway and
saw the garage door was stuck. The 67-year-old searched Google and
found the listing of a local repair service she had used before.
She phoned in a house call.
Google's ubiquitous internet platform shapes what's real and
what isn't for more than 2 billion monthly users. Yet Google Maps,
triggered by such Google queries as the one Ms. Carter made, is
overrun with millions of false business addresses and fake names,
according to advertisers, search experts and current and former
Google employees.
The ruse lures the unsuspecting to what appear to be
Google-suggested local businesses, a Yes, costly and dangerous
deception.
A man arrived at Ms. Carter's home in an unmarked van and said
he was a company contractor. He wasn't. After working on the garage
door, he asked for $728, nearly twice the cost of previous repairs,
Ms. Carter said. He demanded cash or a personal check, but she
refused. "I'm at my house by myself with this guy," she said. "He
could have knocked me over dead."
The repairman had hijacked the name of a legitimate business on
Google Maps and listed his own phone number. He returned to Ms.
Carter's home again and again, hounding her for payment of a repair
so shoddy it had to be redone.
Three years later, Google still can't seem to stop the
proliferation of fictional business listings and aggressive con
artists on its search engine. The scams are profitable for nearly
everyone involved, Google included. Consumers and legitimate
businesses end up the losers.
Google handles more than 90% of the world's online search
queries, fueling $116 billion in advertising revenue last year. In
recent years, it has extended that dominance to local search
queries, emerging as the go-to source on everything from late-night
food deliveries to best neighborhood plumbers.
Yet despite its powerful algorithms and first-rate software
engineers, the company struggles to protect against chronic deceit
on Google Maps.
Once considered a sleepy, low-margin business by the company and
known mostly for giving travel directions, Google Maps in recent
months has packed more ads onto its search queries. It is central
to Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s hope to recharge a cresting
digital-advertising operation.
Often, Google Maps yields mirages, visible in local business
searches of U.S. cities, including Mountain View, Calif., Google's
hometown. Of a dozen addresses for personal-injury attorneys on
Google Maps during a recent search, only one office was real. A
Viennese patisserie was among the businesses at addresses purported
to house lawyers. The fakes vanished after inquiries to Google from
The Wall Street Journal.
The false listings benefit businesses seeking more customer
calls by sprinkling made-up branches in various corners of a city.
In other cases, as Ms. Carter discovered, calls to listed phone
numbers connect to unscrupulous competitors, a misdirection
forbidden by Google rules but sporadically policed by the
company.
Hundreds of thousands of false listings sprout on Google Maps
each month, according to experts. Google says it catches many
others before they appear.
The Justice Department is laying the groundwork for a broad
antitrust probe of Google, which will include a look at the
company's dominant advertising platform, the Journal has reported.
Competitors have complained to antitrust enforcers that Google's
expansion into local searches is an example of anticompetitive
behavior. A Justice spokesman declined to comment.
Google holds 37% of the U.S. digital ad market, according to
researcher eMarketer, though its share is falling to Facebook,
Amazon.com Inc. and others.
Online advertising specialists identified by Google as deft
fraud fighters estimated that Google Maps carries roughly 11
million falsely listed businesses on any given day, according to a
Journal survey of these experts.
They say a majority of the listings for contractors,
electricians, towing and car repair services, movers and lawyers,
among other business categories, aren't located at their pushpins
on Google Maps. Shams among these service categories, called
"duress verticals" inside Google, can snag people at their most
vulnerable.
Google wouldn't provide its own figure, but the company said
false map listings are a small percentage of the total. The company
paid for a 2017 academic study by researchers at the University of
California, San Diego, which concluded 0.5% of local searches they
examined had yielded spurious results.
Search consultant Michael Blumenthal, of Olean, N.Y., said the
study was "totally bogus and meaningless," in part because Google
provided limited data and diluted the study with listings for
restaurants, hotels and other business that rarely post false
locations.
The study's lead author, Danny Huang, said he was a paid Google
intern while preparing the research paper. "All I was doing was
eyeballing in a scientific manner," he said.
Google Maps director Ethan Russell said in a written statement,
"There is no single source of truth for all businesses in all
categories."
Wanted: Plumber
Type a search query and Google will post at the top of the
screen as many as six businesses that bought Google ads. The
adjacent map that pops up is supposed to pinpoint bricks-and-mortar
businesses in the neighborhood.
A search for plumbers in a swath of New York City found 13 false
addresses out of the top 20 Google search results. Only two of the
20 are located where they say and accept customers at their listed
addresses, requirements for pushpin listings on Google Maps.
Google Street View, as well as visits and phone calls by the
Journal, revealed the deception. These businesses were given an
opportunity to dispute the Journal findings about their
location.
Mr. Russell, of Google, said the company removed more than 3
million false business listings in 2018. The company last year also
disabled 150,000 accounts that uploaded the made-up listings, he
said, up 50% from 2017. Google didn't detail its countermeasures,
citing security.
A Google spokeswoman said the company wasn't previously aware of
some high-risk business categories, including water-damage repair
and home listings. Google added new defenses for those businesses
after questions about false listings from the Journal, the
spokeswoman said.
Any storefront business can register to appear on Google Maps
without buying an advertisement. Yet many legitimate businesses
find that the best way to stay ahead of the phonies is to buy ads
from Google.
"I don't think Google is specifically trying to profit, but at
the same time they are profiting," said Molly Youngblood, a
digital-marketing consultant from Jacksonville, Fla. Some of her
clients turned to her after getting pushed from the top of Google
search results by false business listings.
Junk pile
Google's failure to eliminate phony listings puts legitimate
businesses at the risk of threats and blackmail by competitors or
con artists.
Anas Abuhazim, who runs a cash-for-junk-cars operation in the
Chicago suburbs, learned firsthand. His two businesses, Smart Tow
Inc. and Cash for Junk Cars LLC, field calls from people looking to
dump useless vehicles. His phone operators offer callers around
$300 for their wrecks and retrieval within an hour. That leaves Mr.
Abuhazim reliant on Google searches.
Every morning, seven days a week, Mr. Abuhazim stuffs an
envelope with thousands of dollars to swap for cars, which he
mostly sells for parts. Mr. Abuhazim, 35, used to buy ads in the
Yellow Pages until Google came along.
Last year, he was approached by a marketing firm that offered to
lift his business listings on Google Maps for a fee in the tens of
thousands of dollars.
Mr. Abuhazim agreed to the deal. In March, he said, the
marketing firm tightened the screws: Hand over half your revenue or
else. The firm threatened to bury Mr. Abuhazim's Google listings
under hundreds of fictional competitors unless he agreed to the
onerous terms.
Mr. Abuhazim refused, and the agency carried out its threat. It
unleashed an avalanche of new listings under such names as "Chicago
Auto Brokers."
On a recent drive to visit junkyards around the Chicago suburbs,
Mr. Abuhazim searched Google on his phone for local competitors. It
was easy to see that more than half the search results were fake,
he said.
Mr. Abuhazim tried reaching Google to explain his dilemma, but
he was repeatedly routed to an offshore call center. Operators, he
said, "treated me like I'm stupid." With his businesses pushed off
the first page of Google Maps results, incoming calls halved. He
said he was on the verge of closing.
Google cleared away some of the false listings after the Journal
inquired about Mr. Abuhazim's situation.
"It's less harmful to piss off the government than piss off
Google," Mr. Abuhazim said. "The government will hit me with a
fine. But if Google suspends my listings, I'm out of a job. Google
could make me homeless."
Advertisers of all sizes compete in Google auctions to appear
alongside words that potential customers are likely to use in a
Google search. Firms pay Google for every click generated by those
words.
Prices in business categories that Google has identified as ripe
for ad fraud -- specialized attorneys, for instance -- have risen
more than 50% in the past two years. Some law firms pay more than
$1,000 for every customer who clicks on their website from a Google
search.
Before a business appears on its maps, Google typically mails a
postcard, phones or sends an email to the firm with a numerical
code that must be entered into a Google website. The check system
is one way to subvert automated programs that can generate scores
of false businesses.
Google's fraud filters sometimes ensnare legitimate businesses,
freezing them out until they prove they are real.
Google Maps in March dropped all six offices of personal injury
attorney Ian Silverthorne for unspecified "quality issues," he
said. Out of suspicion, he searched Google and counted 108 suspect
listings in and around Orange County, Calif., where Mr.
Silverthorne has an office.
He started calling the listings, he said, and found they went to
a competitor, Oakwood Legal Group LLP, which operates a single
Orange County office. Oakwood didn't respond to requests for
comment.
To be reinstated on Google Maps, Google asked Mr. Silverthorne
to send videos from his phone that showed him in his various law
offices. After inquiries from the Journal, Google reinstated his
listings.
"There will be times we get it wrong," said Mr. Russell, of
Google.
'A nightmare'
Google said it has long battled phantom business listings.
For the past decade, the company has hosted around a dozen
volunteers each fall who patrol its pages for forgeries. This
digital version of a Neighborhood Watch group, which includes
advertising specialists trained by Google, stays at a motel near
the corporate campus, dining on egg whites, from cage-free
chickens, and other free offerings at company cafeterias.
Mr. Blumenthal, the New York search consultant, has joined
several of the annual visits, which are billed as educational
trips. He learned, he said, that Google "has obviously chosen not
to solve the problem." He skipped last year's junket.
Search-engine consultant Andy Kuiper reported on a Google online
forum last fall about a string of bogus appliance businesses
popping up in searches around his hometown of Edmonton, Canada. His
post triggered anonymous, threatening emails.
"You've made a big mistake," said one email writer, claiming to
be from Eastern Europe, "We can play forever." Another read: "I
have an army of Indian guys that can turn your life into a
nightmare."
Afterward, negative reviews rapidly spread in listings for Mr.
Kuiper and his clients. After Mr. Kuiper contacted Google, the
internet giant blocked all reviews of his work, including
legitimate ones, cramping his business.
"Did they find out who this guy was?" Mr. Kuiper said. "I don't
think so."
The Google spokeswoman said only that the email address sending
the threats was suspended. Mr. Kuiper's reviews were blocked
because of what she described as unrelated defensive efforts.
Google is in "an arms race with an extremely motivated group of
scammers who are constantly on the lookout to beat the defenses we
build," Mr. Russell, the Google Maps director, said in his
statement.
One prolific listings merchant is Mark Luckenbaugh. From a
basement smelling of cigarette smoke in Hanover, Pa., he runs a
business that can place as many as 3,800 fake Google Maps listings
a day.
A self-described high-school dropout, Mr. Luckenbaugh manages 11
people who, he said, "mostly" follow Google rules to help clients
get better visibility on Google Maps. A separate staff of 25 in the
Philippines employs unsanctioned methods to fill orders for fake
listings, he said.
"I'm not going to sit and act like I'm a saint," Mr. Luckenbaugh
said. "But I'm not sure you could say I'm a sinner either."
Mr. Luckenbaugh charges $99 for a single made-up listing and up
to $8,599 for a 100-pack. The listings are aimed at businesses that
want to pepper Google Maps with faux locations to generate more
customer calls. Subverting Google's verification system, he said,
wasn't hard.
His employees submit fake business listings to Google, scraping
real addresses from commercial real-estate listings and creating
such search-friendly names as "Best Personal Injury Attorney." He
also buys phone numbers, available cheap online, to attach to the
listings.
When Google automatically calls the newly-purchased numbers, Mr.
Luckenbaugh's employees retrieve the code to activate the listing.
The Google Maps pushpins appear soon after. The listed phone
numbers can be routed to Mr. Luckenbaugh's clients.
"I know Google knows," Mr. Luckenbaugh said. The method leaves
"a huge footprint, and they're just letting it happen," he
added.
The Google spokeswoman said the company was investigating Mr.
Luckenbaugh's operation.
Mr. Luckenbaugh said tens of thousands of the listings have
since disappeared.
Write to Rob Copeland at rob.copeland@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 20, 2019 11:06 ET (15:06 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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